It began with an end. The end of homeschooling and teaching. After our youngest graduated high school, we decided that I would go back to work full-time to help clean up the debt we had piled up through the years. I knew in my heart that I was called to do “Kingdom Work” but an opportunity came for a full-time job with good pay, good benefits, and working with a friend. The biggest drawback in my mind was that it was corporate America. But, because the positives seemed to outweigh the negatives, I ignored the call of my heart. 

As a Christian, I was certainly a minority in the workplace. Foul language was the norm around the office and if you didn't have an alcohol-related story to tell, it wasn't anything anyone was interested in hearing. As time passed, I found myself physically and emotionally exhausted. I have Crohn's disease, so I battle chronic fatigue and other physical symptoms. Some days were physically good. Other days, I cried from exhaustion in the shower first thing in the morning asking Jesus for His strength to make it through the day. Each day I would go to work, come home, nap, eat dinner, and then go straight back to bed. By the time the weekends rolled around, I did nothing but rest to try to be ready for the upcoming week. I pushed myself to the limits trying to stay in this job because we needed the money, and because my friend worked there and I would have felt guilty if I quit. 

I lasted six months before I broke down emotionally and my husband simply said, "Just walk away, it isn't worth it. Your health is more important than any paycheck you could earn." After a couple more weeks of denial and tears, fear and guilt, I turned in my resignation. What I didn't know at the time was that I was losing both my job and my friend. When I resigned, she told me that she was so angry with me she would "let me know when she wanted to speak to me again."  Which, as it turned out, was never again.  

It was a messy, sad story full of chaos and financial mess, but Jesus was there through it all. 

The beauty of our Father’s love for us, is that even in our mistakes, our confusion, our hurt and pain, He never leaves us. In Jeremiah 29:11-13, God speaks these gentle words to our hearts that can become so full of chaos, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

He was already in my tomorrows and had a plan in place. Before I resigned I had asked God to help me find a job that would honor Him and be “Kingdom Work;” the work I knew I was called to do.

I shared the desires of my heart with a friend, and told her how I had been seeking God’s hand in this area of new employment. About a week later that same friend sent me a job posting, curious if it might be a good fit for me. Because of God’s love and faithfulness I am now working at that very job and feel blessed to be there! 

God knows the plans He has for us, and they’re always plans to prosper us, plans to give us a hope and a future. I was called to His Kingdom Work, and despite the fact that at one time I chose to ignore that call on my life, He in His faithfulness made a way for me back to His work and His plans. God reached into my life and restored my calling.

I have come to realize that the loss of that friend was actually a blessing. Sometimes the Gardener removes people from our lives that are toxic like weeds, we just can't see it because we are too close to them. Now that she is no longer a part of my life, I have less stress, and my husband and I have time to cultivate healthy friendships with other people we once didn't have time for.

I have come from a place of chaos and uncertainty to a place of freedom and calm. I can look back and see that God had this plan in place and He worked it together for His good.

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28 (NASB)